Life Lessons from Jerry Springer

Recently, my “work wife” and I started a tradition where we occasionally go to my apartment over the lunch hour and watch The Jerry Springer Show. I’m not sure whose idea it was, or why we continue to keep doing it, but it’s a delightful custom, and I have learned many valuable lessons from it:

Life Lesson #1: Neck Tattoos Will Get You Far in Life

According to the episodes I’ve seen so far, in order to get on Jerry Springer, someone in your party MUST have a tattoo on the neck. Your “party” includes:

you

your baby daddy/mama

the person your baby daddy/mama has been cheating on you with

any other extraneous characters that you bring with you, like aunts, friends, strippers, or farm animals

Life Lesson #2: Self-Defense Skills are Important

Normally, I would NOT be the right person to ask for instruction about self-defense. However, in every episode of Jerry that I’ve seen so far, there’s been some sort of scuffle between guests – and watching these fights has turned me into an expert of sorts.

Here are the tips that you must follow in order to do well in a physical fight – televised or not:

Take your high heels off first.

Rather than throwing actual punches, simply spin your arms around like a human windmill. This will make it much harder for your victim to dodge you.

If your opponent has a weave, you’re obligated to rip it off her head and then proceed to whip it at her.

Feel free to take a break from the fight in order to show the onlookers your twerking skills. This is completely normal fight behavior.

When you’re handed a cup of water under pretenses of “cooling off,” it’s imperative that you chunk this across the room at your opponent.

Life Lesson #3: Don’t Buy into Gender Stereotypes

Speaking of fights, the brawls between women on Jerry look much more terrifying than the ones between men. The women are brutal – they kick and punch and karate chop and pull out hair. Meanwhile, the men look like T-Rexes on muscle relaxers. There’s a lot of half-hearted clawing at each other’s faces.

Life Lesson #4: Don’t Give Up on Love

Based on what I’ve seen from watching the show, love can endure all sorts of relationship disasters.

No matter how many of your partner’s relatives you’ve had an affair with (or how many of their limbs you’ve stolen) – he or she will probably still take you back, if you sound convincingly apologetic, and say romantic things.

If romance isn’t your strong suit, these gems from the show should give you some inspiration:

“Even though I cheated on you with my own cousin, I want you back.”

“We have to make it work for our kids. Even though one of the kids isn’t actually yours.”

“You used to make me barbecue. I miss it now.”

And this one, which didn’t actually happen on the show (yet), but still sounds tempting:

“Let’s go off into the sunset and get our necks tattooed together.” Swoon.

Some might say that The Jerry Springer Show is the cause for society’s decline, but I say that if you look really, really, really hard – and maybe get a little bit drunk – you can find all sorts of important messages. In fact, the show is like Aesop’s Fables, if Aesop had cheated on his girlfriend of six months with her uncle, and then gotten into a fist fight with his best friend on television.

Has anyone else ever watched this classy show, or similar ones like Maury? What lesson(s) did you take from these shows?

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16 thoughts on “Life Lessons from Jerry Springer”

I almost feel dirty watching Jerry Springer. Additionally, a few of my brain cells have died each time I’ve watched an episode. I deduce that if I watched an episode everyday for the next 5 years, I would have the mindset of a toddler.

Believe it or not I was once on the Jerry Springer show and it was completely staged, all expenses paid trip to Chicago, plus I got paid. There was a fight but thankfully I wasn’t involved and, no, I do not have a neck tattoo.

Yeah, I figured that show was probably about as “real” as a sitcom, but it’s still fun to watch anyway. I cannot believe you were on the show – that is awesome and hilarious! What was the “theme” of the show the day you were on?

Um…you do realize you had a step-uncle that was on Maury Pauvich, right???? Great back story, too. He wouldn’t agree to do the show until they bought him some new teeth. Seriously. I think his had mostly fallen out due to meth/poor dental care. He goes on one of those lost loves/you are the father themes. Turns out this woman had passed off the baby as somebody else’s when they were young. The dad passed or they got divorced and the momma was dying and told her that that hadn’t been her real father and that Uncle Peewee was the daddy. Sad because Peewee had wanted children all that time and it wasn’t until later in life he finally became a dad. Girl and PeeWee meet on Maury. Lo and behold she has like 5 children and a bun in the oven. I think she also gets DNA done on one of the kids as all 5.5 of them had different daddies. And that is why you never claim kinfolk from Oklahoma. 😉 I might have one or two details messed up, but Grandma Peggy told me about it and I had to keep telling her it isn’t something to be proud of.

I truly have no words. I definitely have NOT heard that story, and I’m both fascinated and a bit embarrassed by it. And amused. And confused. Haha. I’ll have to run this one by my dad the next time I see him…

What cracks me up most about this show is the way people have affairs with whoever happens to be sleeping on the couch. There’s always some girl who lets her sister or best friend stay over and her baby daddy ends up having an affair with them.

I’m convinced it’s pure laziness. Your next sexual partner is whoever you run into on the way to the bathroom.

It made me laugh that you brought up the bathroom, because that was totally a guy’s reason for having an affair. He claimed he cheated because while at a party, a girl followed him into the bathroom. Jerry clarified, “So the whole reason you slept with her was because she just happened to follow you in there?” Guy’s answer: “Well…yeah.” Laziness, indeed!

What’s nice about the show is that it lifts your self-esteem though. No matter what’s going on in my life, it’s probably not as disastrous as those people’s lives.

Yes! It’s never good to have an affair, but you have to wonder why they don’t go further from home. I mean, there’s a lower chance of getting caught and at least you aren’t messing up your significant other’s relationships as badly.

But they always pick the person they happen to trip over on the couch.

Maybe we’re not giving them enough credit – maybe plan A is to be more secretive/clever, and then they get….distracted. Like “Hmm, I feel like cheating. Maybe I’ll go out and pick up someone at a bar! …Eh, I’ll just take this one on the couch.”